180 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
ous industries. Explanatory studies and suggested methods 
of practical application were also prepared and distributed 
by the national Federation office. As the result of this 
educational work, the organized labor movement has irrev- 
ocably espoused the productivity theory of wage-fixing as 
the basis of future policy and action. 
TaE PracricaL EvoLuTioN oF THE THEORY 
So far as the history of the development of the “pro- 
ductive efficiency” theory as to wages is concerned, the re- 
markable feature of the movement was, as has already been 
shown, that the idea has been repeatedly put forward by 
labor organizations, both before and immediately after the 
war, as the justification for wage claims, or as the ground 
for a more. equitable distribution of the output of industry. 
Their efforts, however, had been more or less futile. Stu- 
dents and writers on economics had always, of course, 
clearly developed the relation between rates of wages, labor 
costs and the productivity of labor, but even they had been 
most interested in showing that labor could hope to secure 
more only by producing more. Their productivity theories 
had not gone further in a practical way than preachments 
against expecting wage advances without increasing output. 
Altho the principle had been used in a case in 1910, the 
first comprehensive presentation of the “productive effi- 
ciency” theory was put forward by the Brotherhood of 
Locomotive Firemen in a wage arbitration with Eastern 
railroads in New York City in 1913. The effort was so 
successful in the way of securing advances in rates of pay, 
that the same argument was made the basis of their claims 
by both Locomotive Firemen and Engineers in 1914-1915 
"1 “Wages and Labor’s Share,” by Jurgen Kuczynski and Marguerite Stein- 
feld—Research Series, No. 2; also “Wages and Labor’s Share in the Value 
Added by Manufacture,” Research Series No. 4. American Federation of 
Labor, Washington, 1927. 
2 See pp. 32-40, 69-70.